Report

Should Developing Countries Fear Secular Stagnation?

This policy paper examines the case for secular stagnation and focuses on what the syndrome of concerns that underlie it implies for developing countries. The concerns are far from idle, since economic growth in developing countries has also slowed sharply in recent years. As the Table 1 on page 7 shows, growth in developing countries as a group in 2015 was over 2% slower than in 2011, a year when it was in line with the long-term pre-crisis average. Though the averages may have been skewed by severe crisis in the Commonwealth of Independent States (Russia in particular) and in Latin America (Brazil especially), all developing regions slowed, in some cases, such as the Middle East and North Africa, growth halved.